40. Chapter 40

I felt the laces squeeze tight around my stomach, cutting off my air. It was oddly comforting, being held close like an embrace. It is a feeling my life has missed for many years. I do not remember the last time I was hugged- no, I do. It was when Carlisle left my life.

Forever. I realize that now. I’m twenty-one. Five years have passed, each day like the next, full of busy periods of nothingness, moving with purpose for no reason.

“You look lovely, Esme.”

I smile at my mother. “Why, thank you.”

She drops the white veil of a skirt over me and smiles at the handiwork. “I am certain Charles will be pleased.”

I make an attempt to simper like I care what he thinks at all. “Really?”

“Positively bewitched.”

She pins one last curl of hair behind my head. I survey my appearance in the mirror. It’s a nice enough dress.

Plain white, covering from my neck to the floor, robes my body. I am not certain where the garment begins and the elaborate metaphor ends. Ah, so much can be hidden behind this dress, sheathed in nothingness so the man who gets it never suspects what’s within the primped and gilded package.

Clearly, this is the intent. I’m being dressed up. Like a little girl playing with her siblings, like a child. Just a daydream. Nothing important, nothing real. I try to pretend there are no life changing consequences here, no eternally reaching commitment, no horrible threatening doom, no stranger waiting to make me what he wants.

I am being married off, sold like livestock to serve a purpose in a random person’s life, someone I don’t care about.

And I am utterly indifferent. Either way there is nothing for me to live for. I have no purpose. I don’t have anywhere to run. I remember when I was a child- I never would have consented to this. If that’s what was needed, I would have turned and fled on my feet, with no direction, just escaping, so I could continue to seek whatever I wanted.

But I found what I wanted. I had my purpose, my heaven, my guiding wonder, and I lost it. Anything my life is now will be miserable in comparison. I might as well take the path of least resistance.

This is it. I let my own eyes glaze over my face in the mirror. I am pretty. No beauty, but pretty. I have even features and creamy skin. My eyes are blue, like the sky. My favorite color. I smile at my reflection.

I look like a happy bride, but I am not. It’s just one more lie… but what do I care? Everything I have become, everything I do and am, is a lie, and so I might as well choose the most outrageous.

No one will ever catch me at this great sorry game. No one cares enough to notice the ludicrous fabrication I am.